TOPIC: Report back from Iraq
GUEST: Jodie Evans, Co-Founder of Code Pink for Peace
DATE: July 21st, 2003
Transcribed by: Elena Dar

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Sonali Kolhatkar: You've been to Iraq several times. When did you last go and how long were you there?

Jodi Evans: I went to Iraq in February with Code Pink to see what was happening so we can come back and tell the experience of being there. We found ourselves there again realizing that we are not getting what’s happening in the news. So it was time to go back and bring the stories again. We also were able to raise the money, to start the "International Occupational Watch Center", which was founded by "United for Piece and Justice". We went there, opened the office, hired the staff, and got it moving.

Sonali Kolhatkar: So you went before the war began and after the bombing stopped?

Jodi Evans: Yes. After the bombing stopped, after we could see the chaos that was happening. It was getting worse instead of getting better.

Sonali Kolhatkar: Tell us about "Occupation Watch Center" What does it do?

Jodi Evans: It monitors human rights abuses, daily violations of the charter of the UN, because if you are an occupying power your responsibility is to create security, and to give services. Neither of this was happening. They are really violating the Geneva Convention daily. Also to make sure that Iraq is given to the Iraqis, that the contracts are given to them, that the oil is sold is for their benefit and that women are represented in a new government.

Sonali Kolhatkar: Is there an attempt to forge a relationship at all with the US authorities there and work with them or you are primarily a "watch dog". Are you there to guide them to do the right thing or to pressure them to do the right thing?

Jodi Evans: I think guide first and pressure second. I definitely spent a lot of time in the palace trying to create relationships, trying to find out how we could help and show them what was not working. Even with the soldiers, every time we talked to them we talked about ways they could work better, how to make their life easier, how to get rid of the separation between them and Iraqis in the street. It was very sad, we had this amazing relationship with the Iraqi but soldiers had this distance with them. It was really created by a lack of information. So when they start to break that down, when they start to have relationships and they start to learn how to speak their language it is going to be easier for both sides who are in this chaos. At the palace we definitely went and tried to help them, worked with the woman who represents gender in Bremer’s office to help her get into the community and introduce her to women who have been doing grassroots organizing. We were working with a very elitist group of women and the grassroots were not represented at all.

Sonali Kolhatkar: Let’s talk about what is happening in the palace. Now that Saddam Husein’s palace being occupied by US, what is the atmosphere like over there?

Jodi Evans: One of the shocking moments for me was when I realized that it was not really the US. The State Department doesn’t have any control over this Coalition Provisional Authority. It is its own governing structure. I’m not sure who it answers to, I guess the White House, but it is a coalition made up of the US, Australia, England, Poland. Everybody has a little bit of representation there. Anyone with power is from the United States, but as you start to go down the tiers there are members from the other coalition forces. They use these constant sweeps, when a coalition soldier gets shot they do those sweeps, put them in the detention centers...

Sonali Kolhatkar: You mean they put Iraqis in detention centers?

Jodi Evans: Yes, Iraqis and also there was one American businessman who got caught in Basra. He was staying in the hotel. He described what it was like -- he said somehow he got out of it. He was able to talk his way out of it. He went to the American Consulate and asked what would have happened to him, what he should have done. The woman in the American Consulate said :"There nothing we could have done for you. We are the United States and they are the CPA, we are two totally different things. We would not be able to help you."

There are young man that have disappeared for three or more weeks into this place at the airport that is this "Detention Center" where people are being held. You hear all kind of horror stories, you don’t now what is true, because they don’t let Amnesty International through, they don’t let Human Rights Watch in. They let the Red Cross in but Red Cross had to write off their rights to say anything. If you get funding from the American government like USAID to do one of the humanitarian projects in Iraq you have to sign something Bremer put out that says : "You can not say anything that contradicts or in any way judges what the CPA is doing". Save the Children had to wait months before they could come in because they didn’t want to be muzzled. Finally they chose to be muzzled in order to be able to help the children. Mercy Corps who have been there months beforehand trying to figure out how they could help with their humanitarian aid still hasn’t signed it. So there is this "black hole" at the airport where who knows how many people are. I spoke to the woman at the airport who literally shakes with anger at being locked out, not being given the information, and a woman from MPR who said: "I went up to the guy who runs the center and said I know the names of the people who are there, but when are you going to release the names? He said: "In due time."

Sonali Kolhatkar: So every time there is a US soldier that is killed around the area where the person...

Jodi Evans:...around the area where the person was shot...

Sonali Kolhatkar: ...the Coalition soldiers "sweep up" the neighborhood and just randomly detained mostly men?

Jodi Evans: Mostly men. It’s US soldiers and CPA at its own authority. We’ve got to get the difference there. We’ve got the military which are the soldiers, they do their thing. We’ve got CPA which is a kind of governing authority.

Sonali Kolhatkar: The CPA has representation from various governments but primarily from the US. The "military arm" of CPA is primarily US soldiers?

Jodi Evans: Primarily.

Sonali Kolhatkar: So, they go through and sweep up the area where US soldier went missing and ...

Jodi Evans: I’ll just tell you a few stories. I was not a witness. But some of these stories... They go in the middle of the night and there are no lights, because there is no electricity, so they go through and things are knocked over, houses are left in disarray, and they basically grab anybody that seems like they would be young and male and could be a part of what happened. They put wraps over their heads. There was one guy -- the skin on his face was scratched off . He came back with electric probes had been done in his toenails, and handcuffs... You can’t get near in order to find out what is happening inside.

I went to very conservative place, I went to NDPE and asked the Iraqi staff there: " Do anyone know about this?" Every single staff member had someone inside: a nephew, neighbor, or a friend that had been detained and is still detained.

Sonali Kolhatkar: How are the Iraqi people reacting to this?

Jodi Evans: Frustration, anger, disappointment, humiliation. The fact that they have no electricity... In 1991 which was much worse than what happened now, everything was up and running in a month. They feel that the US do it on purpose to them, they want to keep the chaos. There are no traffic lights, the total chaos on the streets, horns honking constantly, at night the lights go out, there are no street lights, everything is dangerous, at night you’ve got to be in by eight.

Sonali Kolhatkar: Is there a curfew?

Jodi Evans: The curfew is at eleven, so that’s the curfew for the army. There is still the danger in the streets. Between eight and eleven you are kind of taking your life in your own hands because there are no street lights, and that is when most of the killing and stabbing and "Ali Baba" crimes take place because they can’t be out after eleven. So there is a kind of "dusk" period which is when all the crime takes place.

Sonali Kolhatkar: Explain this term you’ve just used: "Ali Baba" crime.

Jodi Evans: That’s the term the Iraqis use for thieves. When you try to cross the desert from Amman to Baghdad there are the Ali Babas who are stopping the cars, stealing the cars and stealing everything inside. They don’t kill anyone, but leave people on the side of the road with nothing. Actually, when we came to the border we’ve heard one story from one of the soldiers. He said: Ali Babas are actually nice, they left one person without nothing on the side of the road, and he asked what he was supposed to do. So one Ali Baba gave him thirty dollars. "

Sonali Kolhatkar: Do you think this sort of "Ali Baba" crime is the result of desperation ?

Jodi Evans: I’m sure there are many reasons. Let’s just start with a few: 65% unemployment -- don’t forget there are teachers, nurses, doctors, other people who are still doing their work but they have not been paid for four months. Also there are eighty thousand police that were fired without question of allegiance. It’s like firing the cops in LA because they know Bush. It’s a stretch.

This are guys who know who the criminals were or who had been let out of prison during the war so they would have known whom to watch. They would have known what the neighborhoods look like, who to talk to, who runs the neighborhood because in some neighborhoods they have their own kind of armed force. Rumor is that a lot of these police have gathered in what we call " mafias", and are running neighborhoods. We did the investigation where an English photographer got killed because we met the English photographer the day before. Basically what came back from the Iraqis was that it was a "Mafia" area. Basically, they make people come out of the area to shoot them. They shoot them in the neck, in the veins.

Later we met a soldier that just lost his friend. He described what had happened. That was the area that they felt was patrolled by the Mafia. Those are the things that are rising up out of the anger, out of the feeling "they are doing this to us on purpose, they are destroying our culture, it is obvious they are spending money on the oil wells, and not on the electrical."

They feel there is a spite towards them, it is painful for everyone.

Another story to let you know how people feel in their heart: There were thirty-six Iraqi nuns in the Dominican Order that have a hospital. I went to visit them and they were describing how it was like during the invasion, how they slept under the operation table. The most profound thing for me was that they said if it was not for their religion they would pick up the machine guns and start shooting. Those are nuns. That’s what they feel in their heart. A lot of Iraqis said that if it was not for my religion I would pick up the machine gun and would be shooting.

Sonali Kolhatkar: How are children doing? They must be the worst sufferers during past ten years. I can’t imagine how is it now...

Jodi Evans: You know, when you are a kid the world is just the world -- you don’t make judgements about it. So, they can still look at you and smile with smiles that just melt your heart. I met the shoe-shine boy on my first trip. I couldn’t go to where he was. Someone could go to his neighborhood, but it was too dangerous for me to go. But he was fine. Instead of him being outside of where we lived it was full of street kids who had no home. They were sniffing glue, they didn’t eat every day, they lived on the street. It was really painful. I went to one neighborhood where they didn’t have water for seven days. People were crying, children were dying, especially babies. Kids were swimming in excrement in the streets. The smell was horrible. In the midst of the tragedy the kids would still run up to me, smiling, playful. They stole the lens cap of my camera and one kid grabbed it, and they were all screaming:" Ali Baba", and chasing after him. It is a reality for them.

I went to the hospital, there were many children whose faces had been burned off from the explosions of the missiles, or who’ve picked up object of mystery that had exploded their hand off. A young man was walking and kicked it and it exploded his leg off. The hospital was full of kids, suffering from the horrible things that had happened to them. Mothers were sleeping on the floor next to their beds. The hospitals according to doctors and nurses are much worse that they were before the war. They are not getting the medicines they need.

So many people say it much worse now. So many people say that it was better during the invasion. They prefer Saddam back. Just to give you an idea what is it like right now.

Sonali Kolhatkar: What about mothers and women? What are they going through?

Jodi Evans: First of all you don’t see a lot of mothers and women because they are locked in their houses. They don’t come out. They are very afraid. I have met with a woman who is the translator at the palace. We talked about how she got a job. She really opened up. She saw this job for a translator, she went five days, she had to fill out the forms for being interviewed for five days, on the last day for five hours, for the security clearance. She hadn’t been out of her house for two months because she was so afraid. She didn’t care if she lived or died any more. She can’t let the cab to drop her off at the CPA entrance because if Iraqi men know the Iraqi women working inside, they are dead. At every turn she is playing with fire. But she literally had to come to a place where during the invasion she would laugh and take care of herself , but after the invasion it is too much! She said there were no words to describe how she felt. She said: "I have no more to give!"

Sonali Kolhatkar: What about the vacuum that has been rapidly filled up by a lot of the Islamic clerics that seem to be gaining political ground. From what I’ve read because of the political vacuum, vacuum of law and order there are some Iraqi figures that can gain some legitimacy and gain some support that also happened to be proponents of Sharia Law?

Jodi Evans: It is not gaining power. They always had power, those communities have always been very strong, the "muhadin" in these communities became very wealthy because they didn’t have to pay a tax. They were able to keep it in the community and they actually have their own military. I met the guy who is the intelligence officer. His job is to "translate" the Shia’s ways of operating to Bremer so he can understand how to relate to them. The last day I was there he was basically describing to me that one Muhadin is just playing them like they are a mouse. They were able to keep power, they are used to playing power games. They were able to keep their communities.

Baghdad is the worst part of Iraq right now. Other communities that are smaller are already back and running. They have governing structures. They already had elections, but they elected fundamentalist leaders. So Bremer said: "We are not going to acknowledge those elections, we only need democracy when it fits our needs."

There are majors that are outside Baghdad, running the town. There is electricity, they are working smoothly. Falujah is a very fundamentalist place. It basically kicked the Americans out. The deal was that the Americans had to leave before they would approve the governing council. From what I understand, there are dealings every day. They have to give money; there is lots of negotiating going on behind closed doors. Definitely, Bremer feels like he has got somebody on the other side of the table with more cards than he has.

Sonali Kolhatkar: Despite the obviously dictatorial regime of Saddam Husssein the one interesting aspect of that government was that it was a secular government, when the Iraqi women were among (at least in the Arab world) fairly advanced in their freedoms, in what they could and couldn’t do...

Jodi Evans: ... and they were very professional. They were doctors. They say in the hospitals now there are women who are doctors that now were kind of demoted down to nurses. They have to come in covered. If you work in the university, you have to come in covered now. Because of these edicts from the Muhadins too. If you work for an American, you are dead. If you are a woman and not covered, you are dead. Definitely women are much more covered than the ones that we would see when we were there in February.

They talk about them having to be covered. There was the woman Younor who created a project in order to save women from the "honor" killings. She gathered a lot of women together and she talked about it how we need to save this women. Every single woman walked out of the room, because if they would have been found with her they would be killed. It is a part of heir religion and Constitution that a family has a right to kill the woman who had sex outside the marriage.

Sonali Kolhatkar: So that was a part of the original Constitution under Saddam Hussein?

Jodi Evans: Under his Constitution, not the original one that was in 50’s. He adjusted it to include that. That is a big issue also. Right now to get money poor Iraqis are kidnapping the children of rich Iraqis. A lot of times they are just kidnapping, getting the money and returning the child. But often they are raped. There was one eleven year old whose trauma was obvious. Sometimes they are killed because they didn’t get the money.

There are more rapes than before. I think there were seven hundred percent more rapes were reported. You don’t know which is true. Every time a woman is raped that’s an "honor" killing that can happen out of that. There was one instance we have heard, I believe it was Sunni had to leave to Syria because he had been threatened to be killed, because he had too much power. He left the country. They kidnapped his nine daughters, the youngest was eleven, raped all of them. When the daughters were returned they were killed by the family. So even Younor who is trying to save the women, they are coming from villages all over to her Center, which is also the Center for the Union of the Unemployed. It is an amazing gathering, just awesome activists. Her life is constantly at risk. There was a woman that’s next door to her on the same street. She was the one we have met in February. She had the Cultural Center. They got bombed. Everything you could pick up was taken by Ali Babas. We were talking to her and she said: " There are these people squatting in my brother’s bank down the street". We said:" We know those". We took them and introduced them. She had never been political before. Younar is teaching them all how to be political for the sake of the country. Ermineh whom we hired to run the Center is awesome. She writes for the IMC Paper, she has a great voice very clean, concise and she understands the issues perfectly. One night (you’re supposed to meet at nights), everybody stays in one room, because they can’t go home. We were getting ready to go to bed. We were talking about Younor. One woman said: "No, you can’t talk to her, she protects prostitutes." I said: "No, she actually protects women from the "honor" killing. She said:" That is considered prostitution in our country. She is a bad woman". I said: "Ermineh, I can’t believe this is coming out of your mouth." I was introducing Younor and Ermineh. We were talking with both of them about the situation and how you have support women no matter what and why are they creating a traitor if someone is a victim of something. The issues just layer after layer get complicated.

Sonali Kolhatkar: You have mentioned the IMC Paper. Talk about Independent Media Center in Iraq.

Jodi Evans: It is a kind of growth out of Voices in the Wildness. Those who have stayed behind decided to create an IMC there. They are putting together a website. It comes and goes. It is overloaded, but they have been putting out a paper. They are on their third. There are students from university, about twenty of them that are learning how to write. In the process they are telling their stories. It is in both English and Arabic. Ermineh, the woman I was talking about also writes a piece in it. She wrote a wonderful piece about how the only sign of liberation is the graffiti on the walls. We talked about the Iraqis expressing their views, all of which are: "Americans, go home!"

Sonali Kolhatkar: Let’s spend a little time talking about your contact with the US soldiers in Iraq. You have managed to talk to many of them and sometimes it is difficult for people in the Peace and Justice movement and Anti-War movement to understand what are the US soldiers going through.

Jodi Evans: As soon as you see them, your heart opens. They are the age of my son; they are eighteen, nineteen and twenty. You can see the fear in their eyes. In a lot of the pictures I’ve brought back you can see the fear. They are unequipped for what they are doing. They are sitting the middle of the street. Five of them on a Humvee or tank, one up on a tank with a machine gun, with a flak jacket and a helmet. That is in 120 degrees Farenheit, which means 140 degrees Farenheit in their chest. It is hot and dusty; they are not wanted there. They don’t know why they are there. None of it makes sense. I talked to one of them about it. "What do you think about this? Do you want to go home?" He said "My captain told me not to think about it because if I think too much I would not be able to pay attention to my job and would have all the risk of being killed". Women were more exited to talk to us – they said "Yes, I want to go home. I don’t belong here. I joined the reserves to get my education." One of them showed us a packet of food that they are given to eat which is a gray, thick plastic packet and it says "Made in Texas". It is their meal four times a day, out of plastic. Every once in a while we would bring them sandwich or something, so they could have something else besides freeze-dried food. They still sleep in cots that have bugs in them. It is not a pleasant experience for any of them, except maybe those who are in the palace. The ones in the palace got to go to the Fourth of July party. They swim in Saddam’s pool. They sleep in a ballroom, but still on cots. They get hot meals. I think in some of the other cities, small towns where they also headquartered in some of the other palaces, they’ve got it a little better.

Sonali Kolhatkar: So, Baghdad is the worst in terms of the safety and security in all of Iraq?

Jodi Evans: That’s what I understand.

Sonali Kolhatkar: Is there electricity in other cities?

Jodi Evans: Yes. There actually is electricity in parts of Baghdad where Iraqis just have taken it in their own hands. One of the guards is an Iraqi electrician; he wired something together and fixed it up. So the neighborhood has electricity. If you have money, you have electricity, because you are able to go and buy a generator. The cost of generators doubled every day. The hotel we stayed in had a generator. It means you have electricity -- sometimes at least, not all the time. You learn very quickly not to get into the elevator.

Sonali Kolhatkar: What is holding the rest of the city back from getting electricity? What is the prime obstacle to brining electricity back to the whole of Baghdad?

Jodi Evans: That’s Iraqi’s favorite question. What is it? It doesn’t make sense. It is not that hard. There is certainly electricity in CPA. They’ve got the transformer right there. Iraqis think that Americans don’t want them to have electricity -- that they want them to live in this chaos. The guy next to Bremer, the intelligence officer said: "Saddam had a story which was: Keep the dog hungry and it will follow you anywhere. Now we just taking a page out of his book." I’ll tell you the few other things he said. I came in and said "Out on the streets they say it looks a lot like Israel here." He said, "What is wrong with that?" I said, "I don’t think it works that well." He said "Well, it depends on what you want."

There was a guy who was in charge of governing. I asked him what they were doing. He said that right now we are replacing one dictatorship with another. That is out of the mouth of the guy who doesn’t work for the US government. He doesn’t work for CPA. He works for a corporation that was founded by ex-generals. Their job is to create the governing teams and the whole of Iraq.

Sonali Kolhatkar: Your trip to Iraq, the conclusions you might have drawn from your trip to Iraq would be that the US is basically deliberately creating a situation where the Iraqis have to suffer because it might make them easier to control?

Jodi Evans: It is hard to come to any other conclusion than that. I know we all are like [unintelligible] for a while, but by the time I left I don’t know if this is deliberate or stupid or arrogant, but it is happening. When you ask them a question they can’t answer it except with these stupid remarks I got from the intelligence officer and Bremer. Bremer wouldn’t answer a question at a press conference. I cornered him after the conference in an elevator and asked him five questions. He wouldn’t answer.

If you’re in it, it is very hard for you to come to any other conclusion. I was in the CPA and came to the conclusion that this is a very stupid and ignorant bunch of people. First of all, the whole chart of who works there are all men. I would doubt if there is anyone of color. Everyone I’ve met that has a job at the top was from Atlanta, Florida or Texas. They’ve never done the job before. There was a veterinarian who was in charge of hospitals. I asked one guy who was in charge of governing, "Have you ever done this before?" "No." The guy who is in charge of Baghdad I asked, "What have you done before?" He said, "I worked for thirty years for the police department in Atlanta and have management skills." The guy, who is the intelligence guy -- he was just looking for a job on the Internet. That’s how he found his job.

There is a guy from England who showed up at the gates of the palace one day and said "I’m here to help, to volunteer." The next day his job was the Head of rubbish. Which have never been picked up and the are streets full of garbage. So I asked "What do you do with your time? What is your job look like?" He said "I’ve spent last few days in the palace playing with the lions and the cheetahs."

So by the time I was leaving I realized that the people who are running this place have never done it before. There is nothing close to expertise for any of the jobs they hold. They are overwhelmed. The reason I left with more information I should have is that they have more power when they ever have had. They’ve bragging about it. They basically walk around and think: " Look what I’m doing!" They live inside a compound. Iraqis are not allowed inside. They don’t go outside because they are too afraid. The guy who is in charge of Baghdad had nerve to tell me: "Look, everything is getting better. It is going back to normalcy!" I literally wanted to punch the guy out. What does that mean to you?

At the press conference Bremer was saying that the Iraqis are free to travel. I was like, what does the word "free" mean to you? These guys just keep spouting out these words that are meaningless. In the mean time out on the streets the Iraqis continue to suffer every day worse and worse.

Sonali Kolhatkar: What were his justifications of why is the electricity not coming on? What is the official line?

Jodi Evans: Things like, "Every time we try to fix it they blow it up." Nobody seems to agree with that. Nobody says it is happening. I didn’t sit there and watch it so I can’t report. The Iraqis say nobody is blowing up the electrical lines but the Americans.

Sonali Kolhatkar: What about things like food? You’ve mentioned that the US soldiers eat out of these freeze-dried packets. What are the Iraqis eating?

Jodi Evans: They still have their food from the food-for-oil distribution system which is the best in the world, and which is still working. Bremer threatens to end it in November, which I can’t even imagine. Here is a country that for twenty years has been living in a kind of socialism where food, health care, education and low cost housing is available. To say "We are just cutting this off in November", my mind can’t comprehend what that means. So I asked the woman who just has been put on governing council, "What will happen?" She said "There will be lots of fruits and vegetables available." I asked "Where is the money going to come from to buy it?" She didn’t seem concerned. I don’t know what it is going to look like. I can’t even imagine.

With the borders opening up it is another way the Iraqis are feeling fed on. Amol said it so well one night: "We are like a wounded animal in the forest, everyone comes to take a piece of flesh."

Sonali Kolhatkar: The borders have been opened up. No one is monitoring what is coming in, what’s not coming in. At some level it is like anybody can come in with anything. It is almost like a de-facto "free market". At the same time it is even more than that. It is an unregulated, undocumented, unmonitored free market.

Jodi Evans: Exactly.

Sonali Kolhatkar: Do you think it is an ultimate goal of the US to convert this country to the image of some other third world countries which had been colonized, which will eventually sport the McDonalds and Starbucks on every corner?

Jodi Evans: I’m sure they want a "Little America." What do you do about the unemployment? Our concern is Bechtel in Iraq. Worrying if the Iraqis are going to get the money, and this money doesn’t go back to America. Kellogg, Brown and Root got the contract down to the oil well and immediately pulled in five thousand Filipinos and people from other countries. So the Iraqis were very upset that you have sixty five percent unemployment and they are pulling in foreigners. That backfired unfortunately in a very beginning.

We went to meet with Bechtel and they can bring in workers from out of the country. The form that you have to fill out to see if you can be one of the contractors for them is so hard, the bar is so high, that the most American constructors couldn’t fit in it. You have to have this kind of insurance, this kind of bond... There are things that Iraqis never heard of. Basically, we took over. The brother of the owner of the hotel who was a contractor, brought all the things he‘d built, tons of paperwork, really a great guy, very intelligent. We took him up there. He doesn’t qualify! It was heartbreaking what they’ve put him through. They’ve got the bar so high! They were saying that they were hiring the Iraqis, but what we found out was that American businessman was getting the Iraqis to sign his contract. He was actually getting the contract himself. He got the contract for bringing in school furniture and hospital furniture. There were no Iraqis who were going to benefit; nobody had gotten more than a fee for signing his paper. We found out about twenty-five contracts that were given to Iraqis, but we talked to Iraqis to see how much of it had been manufactured in Iraq.

Sonali Kolhatkar: Bechtel is taking advantage of the situation to make a buck on the back of Iraqis?

Jodi Evans: Yes. It is a flood with businessmen from all over the world. It is not just Americans. There are Japanese... From every country. It felt like sharks who smelled blood. You can see in the palace one hundred and twenty businessmen in black suits and ties doing the deal. One businessman was so upset because I could get into the palace and he couldn’t. They knew there was a small window of opportunity and they were thinking, "How much can we jam in that window, how much of this pie can we get?"

I don’t know if people in America know that if you publish a newspaper, if you are in the media, that Bremer also issued an edict that if you criticize the CPA at all you’ll be closed down. There is no freedom of speech. We stared to publish our own paper with the criticism to see what happens. When they are talking about freedoms at every turn the Iraqis feel crushed. They can’t go out on their streets, they can’t figure out how to make a living. Professors have been fired from the university because they were members of the Baath party. It was just summary firings. No one is questioning this.

You can feel that Bremer puts the line on the sand and the Iraqis are always crossing it. I don’t know what is going to happen there, but they haven’t been colonized. They do things in a different way. Bremer doesn’t know what to do with that. They don’t follow orders. They follow something that is inside of them. They are very courageous about it. So he put out a thing that between June 1st and June 14th you had to turn in your guns. There are eight million guns in Iraq, 200 were turned in. The Iraqis basically said: "Even Saddam tried to do that -- do your homework. We don’t separate with our guns."

When Bremer put out a paper saying "In a modern free society the majority of Iraqi citizens have no need to carry weapons." I brought it home to show the IRA!

Iraqis feel the violation of their human rights. They are able to articulate it very clearly. As soon as they saw somebody they just started as fast as they could, naming all the things that are wrong. They know what is wrong and they know how to articulate it. They don’t need any help from us in that area. What they do need is help in how to organize in some of the areas. Especially in Baghdad because that wasn’t allowed. There are some awesome leaders : a hundred thousand members of the Union of the Unemployed. When they take the idea of democracy and put it to work, they understand it, they don’t compromise on it. So these women had been working for this manager at the Palestine Hotel, and he was abusive. They said, "We want to get rid of this manager because he was abusive." They kept saying it, nothing was happening. The next morning they all walked out. They shut down the Palestine Hotel, and they replaced the manager.

There are places where Iraqis are finding their power. A lot of them say, "Sooner or later Americans we will throw you out."

The way Saddam kept them down was you needed Saddam’s control to keep civil war from happening. That was a way he kept his power. That is the way the Americans are doing it again. A lot of them are sensing that maybe it was not true. Given that three months later there is still no civil war, they no realize, maybe they wouldn’t blow each other up.

Sonali Kolhatkar: So, you’ve seen a lot of individual resistance and groups of people resisting the US occupation in their own way?

Jodi Evans: Yes. It is great when it is not violent. I don’t want it to happen violently. It is great when they just stand their ground and create the Iraq they want to have.